Raw Meat
by cagd
Summary: Post NFA. A former USC Sunnydale professor notices an odd student in one of her freshman level English evening classes - chaos results


**Slouch**

Hatchet-faced and rarely participating, he slouches, arms folded in pale silence at the back of the freshman level Rhetorical Writing class you're teaching as adjunct faculty this Fall at some nowhere little Midwestern community collegel, legs out, heavily booted feet in the aisle, a ring of empty desks surrounding him.

Despite his lack of participation in class discussions, the work he submits for each assignment is more sophisticated, nearly Graduate level compared to what gets handed in weekly by the usual Midwestern community college mix of cell phone junkie party girls, their slow-thinking football hero boyfriends who'd failed miserably at regular University, basement dwellers, and the obligatory newly divorced middle-aged housewife or two desperately reaching for something, anything that will make them more employable.

**Red Ink**

Problem is, though you always look forward to seeing what he has to say on paper, his essays and critiques aren't _typed_, but written out in_ longhand_ –something you automatically take off for: the syllabus you passed out the first night specifically states that all assignments are to be double-spaced, in a specific font (Times New Roman) and a specific font size (10). You point out this omission with numerous notes in the margins of his homework in red ink.

He persists.

You deduct. (Besides, it wouldn't be fair to the people who go to the effort of keyboarding their papers to let it slide.)

** We need to talk.**

Finally, at midterm, you call him aside after class, explaining that he needs to submit his work in the proper format or you'll be forced to drop him an entire letter grade despite the overall high quality of his work.

He leans close-mouthed against the doorframe, eyes scanning restlessly, arms folded, long black leather coat flowing down from his shoulders. Irritated by his silence, you add that if he cant afford a PC, he needs to use the computer lab down the hall at ten cents a page.

You wait for a reply, an assent, _anything_ - but get nothing, only a brief glance in your general direction accompanied by a slight shrug as he goes back to nervously watching the hallway.

Badly in need of coffee, you finish reciting Canned Service Information #423 and stand there in the now empty classroom waiting for a response - which you never receive.

Instead, he shoots you one more glance, before, with backpack slung on one shoulder, walking away from you, boots loud in the empty hallway as you pull on your raincoat after downing a quick cup of coffee from the thermos you keep with you at all times before starting the long, wet walk back to your studio apartment, one of many you'd lived in ever since the rug'd been yanked out from under your feet two, maybe three years ago in Southern California.

**Unwelcome Guest**

It wasn't until the rain-soaked following weekend that you notice while going through your class roster that the two of you share the same address.

Well, not exactly: you're B, hes C - literally right across the hall with your landlords son taking up the entire first floor below, which is A.

Frowning, you take a long sip of coffee; you've never met the tenant of the apartment at the back of the house where large old trees crowd up against the close-curtained windows.

Dismissing the coincidence, you move to the next name, thinking, So? We all have to live somewhere! before getting up to pour yourself another cup of the never-ending river of coffee which keeps you going, intending to finish entering midterm grades before midnight on the cheap little laptop that the school provided you with, trying to ignore the inevitable Friday night party in A that's just heating up when someone knocks on your door.

**Peephole**

You pause mid-entry in the little room that's your office, your kitchen, your living room, and your bedroom, thinking its thunder or maybe the party's entering Stage 2 early, before speeding up – tonight's rain is just getting started; you want to get as much done as you can in case the power goes out for the third evening in a row, leaving you in the dark and ready to kill while the kids downstairs whoop it up by candlelight with beer bongs, grass, and the latest hits as the cheap battery on your laptop dies.

The knock repeats itself.

Great, you snarl, Probably some kid looking for beer. Better chase them off or there'll be no peace tonight! You get up and look out the crookedly set peephole to assess the situation before opening the door so you can chew Freddie Freshman or Susie Sophomore a new one before aiming them at the party now raging underfoot.

**Go Away**

Great. You close your eyes for a second, forehead against the door. It wasn't some easily dismissed drunken party animal, it was your problem student, minus long black coat, assigned reading, _Jane Eyre,_ and a notebook with that damned ever-present fountain pen in one black-nailed hand. Not tonight. I have a deadline! You moan, debating if you should open the door or pretend you aren't in, letting him knock until he gets bored and leaves because one of the first rules you learned early as USC-Sunnydale faculty before fleeing the place jobless, was Never let students know where you live!

How in hell did he figure out you live across the hall from him?

Knock. Knock.

_Go away._

He'd probably seen you coming home after work or carrying out the trash – obviously he wants help with his homework, which means you'll end up holding his hand through the rest of whats supposed to be a basic freshman course

Knock. Knock.

_Go away!_

Knock. Knock.

You glare at him through the peephole.

He continues knocking, eyes rapidly flickering back and forth. In the garish fluorescents of the hall you notice they're an almost electric shade of blue and that he isn't platinum blonde like you'd thought, his roots are showing- plus hes wearing a gaudy black Roy Rogers style cowboy shirt, complete with black on black cactus flowers embroidered on each shoulder and the sleeves ripped off, and painted-on black jeans.

Knock. Knock.

_I'm busy!_

Knock. Knock.

_Scram!_

Sliding the tip of his pale tongue across his equally pale lower lip, he pulls a cigarette from behind one ear and lights it one handed, exhaling a nervous cloud of blue smoke while rapping an old-fashioned steel lighter against your door.

Knock. Knock.

_Oh all right!_

You open the door, catching him in mid-rap, almost, but not quite snarling when you ask. "What do you want?"

**Wrestling Match**

He doesn't want any help with the assignment, just a place to read where the noise of the party downstairs wont distract him. Irritating as his hovering on your threshold smelling of cigarettes, Bourbon and something else you cant quite identify beneath his cologne is, you invite him in, firmly informing him that you're busy and to bother you _only_ if its something to do with the assignment. Warning issued, you get back to work, curious as to how your apartment could possibly be any quieter than his because you're right over Landlord 2.0's beer orgy.

Occasionally he'll slip a hand between the faded curtains to peer out the big bay window which dominates your kitchen down at the dark rainy street below, before going back to _Jane Eyre_ – kitchen chair tipped back, booted feet on the cold radiator, laughing under his breath, while looking at you from the corner of one eye or another, smirking around an unlit Marlboro.

Finally, you glare at him over the screen of the laptop, What?

Sneering, he gestures with one black-nailed hand, "S'all a load a 'ol crap, the whole book – l'il Miss Charlotte didn' know a soddin' thing – shoulda' had l'il Miss Jane wise up and hold a pillow over that wanker Rochester's face on their wedding night until the kickin' stopped and then run off w' the money, _stupid cow!"_

"No, its not, and no, she shouldn't have." you reply wanting a fresh cup of coffee with what you keep in the cabinet over the percolator. "And _yes_, she _did_ – know what she was talking about. _Jane Eyre_ is a beautiful exploration of what it means for a woman, or anyone for that matter, to achieve love without sacrificing equality from a time when women in particular were more property than person." Knowing its best he doesn't know about the contents of that cabinet, you try distracting yourself by entering another set of scores while wondering if his Brit accents real or if hes just one more self-proclaimed Whovian you keep running into in your line of work, only better dressed and not half as fat and greasy as most.

"How." He takes his booted feet off your radiator, the front legs of the kitchen chair hes infesting thump down on the worn 1970s linoleum before standing up to twirl the chair so that its backwards before flopping back down, arms folded along the back of the chair which is spilling prolapsed stuffing from its padded back no matter how much masking tape you apply to the problem.

"Would." He leans forward, eyes narrowing, teeth bared in a tight grin around the unlit cigarette, you catch a strong blast of Bourbon, cologne, and something else raw meat?

"You." He pauses, fingers of his right hand holding his place in the book, long enough to flick the curtain aside with his left to take another brief glance down at the wet street.

"Know?" Slouching, he folds his arms across his chest, book dangling loosely from one hand, one eyebrow cocked and a booted foot back up on the radiator.

"We'll discuss it later." Without looking up, you take a sip at the dregs of your now cold coffee – only he's reached across the piles of essays and picked it up.

You stand, reaching for your cup.

Still seated, the student who sits silent at the back of your class holds it just out of reach chair back on two legs, "Ah, ah! I asked you a question. How do you _know_?"

You didn't see his hand move. First it was here, now its _there_.

You're tired, you need coffee; you weren't paying attention, that's all.

Still, the cup was on the table, now it's in his hand.

Angry, you advance; there's more than cold coffee in that cup. The last thing you need is for one of your students to find out what it is, "This isn't my office, it's my apartment. Get out, and leave my cup behind when you do."

"Temper _temper_," he pauses, lowers your cup, sniffing appreciatively, "Bourbon? Think I'll keep it!" The look he gives you over the rim of the cup is like your grandmother's Siamese cat whenever it got a mouse long ago and far away in sunny California.

You make another grab; Adam's apple bobbing, he quickly swallows the whole thing in one go before drawling, "Seems we've got something in common, I'll take a cuppa myself, next time you're pourin', hold the java _pet_." He hands you the empty cup with a nasty smirk.

Tossing it into the sink of dirty dishes you keep meaning to do one of these days in a crash of breaking pottery you point at the door, "Out. Now."

"Well, well, teacher's got fire in her after all." He slides his lighter out of his hip pocket and lights up before placing it absently on the table among the essays and dirty coffee cups, "Never woulda' thought! Well, well, well, well _wellllllll._" Smoke curls out of his nose as the two of you circle each other in the small, cluttered space," Seein' as you're the teacher here, how'ja know 'bout love, and that love without sacrificing who you are is possible? How would you and all your books, your papers, your nouns, your verb and adverbs, know? Go ahead, make it a good one - because I know more than you ever will - it was a crock of old shit back _then_ and its a crock of even older shit _now_ - nothing ever changes!"

Furious, you advance, the two of you fencing while thinking, "He can't be more than twenty, maybe twenty-three, but he talks like a man of forty, fifty – this isn't right!"

The two of you circle some more. Frightened, you stammer out that love between equals is possible you just have to...

Loudly, he interrupts, snarling into your face, breath a weird mixture of tobacco, Bourbon, and raw meat, yes, _raw meat_, "'Cause, pet, t'ain't so! There's always one whats on top, what uses you up, tossin' you aside like so much garbage, with you taking it dry up the arse no matter how much it hurts, because love without someone to love is one of the most painful things in the world – to try and try and try and still wake up every evening alone even when they're laying there right beside you –someone's always got to be the bottom - and that, pet, is _love_ – equality's a _lie_- man or woman, you're _dead_ before you even _begin!"_

You want a drink, right now, a big one, minus the coffee, coffee is alertness, Bourbon is anger- which was why you fled UCLA Sunnydale which the earth swallowed not long after, a barely functional alcoholic who'd been told no matter how hard she worked, she wasn't good enough, wasn't worth the risk of tenuring.

"You're wrong..." you start, but he interrupts, slamming _Jane Eyre_ to the floor, where it lands atop of your Doctoral thesis on the origins of modern feminist literature in the Victorian era, spine broken, pages spilling out.

"Long time ago I got myself locked away in a place where I didn't understand half of what was done to me - they did things to me I understood even less - got cut up like a piece of meat - they played with the inside of my head like so many marbles – but it taught me the truth: the strong always exploit the weak, and that the only winners are the ones who take and take and take, and then take off with all they can grab, to hell with love or anything else!" he but screams in your face, somehow the music from the party below seems louder, spewing up through the floor of into your small apartment like a broken sewer main.

"Get out, and never come back!" You yell, reaching for the cell phone beside your laptop."I'm giving you five seconds and then I'm calling the police, GET OUT!"

He looks at you, startled, as his feet seemingly carry him out of their own volition – you slam the door, locking it before taking down one of the bottles of Bourbon you keep in the cabinet above your coffee machine, draining it and then another, inch by inch into a dirty coffee cup, looking out of the same window at the same street he'd been looking at earlier, trying not to cry because you've lied to yourself that if you only drink a little Bourbon at a time mixed with coffee, you aren't the barely functional alcoholic the administration back at Sunnydale USC said you were when they slammed the door in your face as downstairs, someone cranks up the tunes, drowning out the roaring in your head.

**Hangover**

His lighter gleams balefully on your table/desk as you slowly come out of your Bourbon daze sometime around noon the next day. Should you move? Should you stay, should you complain to the landlord about your neighbor/student, the police? Its not like he actually threatened you is he some sort of escapee? Is he dangerous? What happened last night, really? At least that goddamned party petered out around three a.m. when the cops broke it up.

Maybe you were too busy having a conversation with your old friend, Bourbon to really notice what was going on outside your head. Its always like this when you forget to add coffee to your Bourbon or Bourbon to your coffee you cant tell what came out of your head and what came out of the bottle.

You flop forward, head resting on the cool plastic of the laptop, that's what happens when students figure out where you live.

_Serve you right, stupid bitch!_

**Porcelain Gods**

The lighter gleams at you in sullen silence.

You try ignoring it as you make yourself a very, very late breakfast that you only eat half of – too hung over to even taste what goes into your mouth coming or, as you think to yourself head down in the toilet tossing up what you'd just eaten, going.

You try ignoring it as you shower in the tiny bathroom where you have to open the shower door just to brush your teeth.

You try ignoring it as you look out the big bay window in your kitchen, discovering last night's rain has turned to snow and there's already a foot on the ground.

You give up ignoring it around three when the streetlight outside your window flickers to life and there's now two feet of snow on the ground and _guess what_, the power finally goes out, leaving you in the dark with grades submitted and a lot of empty bottles for company.

So, in the dim light filtering through your kitchen/living/bedroom window, you pick up its solid steel presence and walk across the hall, intending to return it because its mere presence keeps reminding you that you aren't as strong as you like to think you are, not when there's stress and bottles are in the same picture.

Or that you'd been denied tenure track _again_ and got yourself fired the same day because you'd been too honest about how you felt, sending you from small nameless school to small nameless school in small nameless towns, semester by semester, whoever would have you as adjunct faculty, an academic gypsy and about as welcome as a real one, so what if you'd worked your ass off to get your doctorate and were well on your way towards a second one, and taught twice as many Freshman-level classes as your colleagues and all you have to show for it is a thesis nobody reads and a trail of empty bottles...

**Lions Den**

...his door swings open when you knock on it.

The place feels like a cave, the floor in front of you a bottomless pit in the permanent chill that comes with all old houses during a Midwestern winter no matter how high you turn up the thermostat. Hello?

Maybe he was at work, not that you remember a work number listed in among his student information.

"Hello?"

All you have to do is put the lighter down where he can see it, you're a drunk, not a thief, turn around, close the door behind you, go back into your apartment, lock the door, and better yet, slide a chair, no, a dresser, in front of it.

"Anybody here?"

There's a long silence as you make your way into the darkness, eyes adjusting to the thick gloom. The place stinks of raw meat, cigarettes, and Bourbon, the last making your dry mouth water and your hands shake.

Brushing against something that almost feels alive you scream, dropping the lighter to the floor, knocking over what feels like a stack of DVDs in plastic cases, then another, and then another in a long, drawn out rattling clatter before an arm slides around your shoulders, there's a rasp, the smell of butane and a small flame flares up so that the first thing your dazzled eyes make out is his face in yours.

"Boo."

You scream, pitching forward into darkness.

**Mirror**

You come to on a mattress in the corner, he sits beside you leaning against the wall, shirtless in black jeans, pale glints of hair, skin, and teeth showing as he lights up another cigarette.

The mattress is stale, the air is stale, and the room itself with its stacks of DVDs piled around a metal folding chair, empty bottles, and a coffee can full of butts facing a large flat screen television which glints in what little light there is coming in through the heavy curtains– is even staler.

"Don/t you know its rude for a lady to enter a gentleman's room uninvited?" He inhales, face lit orange for a second.

Wordlessly you shake your head, you sense a shrug, and he gets up, padding barefoot through the darkness followed by what sounds like a refrigerator door opening and shutting. Something is set on a counter, there's a ripping noise, there's a gurgle, "I'd share the bottle, pet, but I doubt you'd like it." There's a crash of broken glass as a bottle hits the floor in a blast of cologne.

Too afraid to move, you remain silent as his voice floats around the shadowy room, "Had you warned me, I might have tided up, maybe washed the dishes. You'll have to settle for a folding chair an telly – I don't need much after takin' all I could from them as what took me."

A laugh, another cigarette, he gestures towards you with it, a tiny orange star in the gloom, before wiping the back of one hand across his mouth – "Soddin' powers out, gotta drink it cold, all the cups are dirty, outta booze, Tabasco wont do the trick, and I'm outta soddin' Wheatabix – gotta make do with aftershave t kill th' taste!" He laughs again, a titter that almost sounds like hes bordering on crying, interrupting his own complaint. "As if anyone in this arsehole of a town would know what Wheatabix is!"

Needing coffee, Bourbon, _anything_, you try edging away along the wall behind you, hes beside you again, breath meaty, strongly perfumed, restraining you with one hand which feels a lot colder than it should, "You woke me up – I likes me sleep, but got lonely last night, too much noise - stupid book, the Bronte sisters always set me off thought I saw one of THEM outside in the street last night in th' rain – got bored, got lonely, signed up for a night class, only so much telly one can take – maybe one of THEM saw me, one a THEM barstards from W&H wantin' their pound a flesh after we tried our best t stop em. Me robbin' the till on me way outta L.A. was icin' on th' cake!"

Again that tittering laugh, that odd mixture of accents the hand starts wandering through your hair, a short, sensible cut, one that you chose because it looked more professorial – "You should really let it grow out, makes you look old, tired, maybe a red rinse..." there's a long slurping noise, followed by a gulping sound. "Ahhhh, disgustin', why don't more oinkers donate? Enough a them around these days! Cholesterol, sugar... still, this one... male... fruity with a slight oaken aftertaste, age say, 35?" The hand toys with your ear, before wandering down the side of your neck – you want to scream.

"Gay as a treefull a monkeys on laughin' gas – not that Id know..." the hand pauses, another laugh almost sob – "Big lie there! I gave him, her, _them_, everything, even me life, once upon a time and a town died, and what'd it get me? Rug burns, a corporate till, and eyes on the back a' me head!"

There's more sorrow than anger now; his hand continues caressing the side of your neck where you lie trapped on a stale mattress gritty with what you hope are cigarette ashes. "I knew one like you – once. She was the mother, bout your age, but no drunk."

"Hey!" insulted, you forget the hand, you forget the predicament you're in before the hand presses you down, reminding you to be frightened.

"Lie still, you hit your head on the floor during our latest tango - might have a concussion – but smarter, and kind – it might have been a meeting of equals, but I was too stupid, too busy obeyin' me uglies whenever the daughter was around –that one ate me alive and left me for dead - I'd do it all over again, bloody Hell, but that hurt – they brought me back and I fell for it again, with me on the bottom and him on the top and its all over but the crying when the hammer fell!"

**Indigestion**

The silence is almost thick enough to cut with a knife until another slurping sound with its companion gagging sound followed by a cough – "Shoulda' took those bottles away from you last night, Bourbon kills the taste - forgot to get more before the snow started... _his_ daughter was almost as bad – crazy as a bedbug, that one, but she knew where I lived and moved in: shovin' me t' th' bottom 'til she didn't need me any more." Slurp. Belch. Another throat caress, his cold mouth covers yours - you try to get away, he shushes you, face strange against yours, hard, dry, not human, before softening, stale, meaty cologne-soaked breath catching in your nostrils, making you gag, "Sorry, sorry pet, I forget what I'm like when I'm hungry – though I don't do _that_ any more – not much left to me now, is there? God, its cold in here – never could take the cold..."

**Electric Blanket**

So you lie there shivering as he wraps himself around you in the dark, old house chill, a frigid, heavy weight as the snow falls and the wind blows, face pressed into the side of your neck, drinking in your warmth as you lie there too terrified to move until somewhere in the gloom of around dawn you fall asleep despite your terror until the cold wakes you later that morning – snow blows in through the window, melting on the now warm but stained electric blanket you'd fallen asleep beneath with odd dreams of him standing over you fully dressed in that long black coat of his, window open, pillow in both hands, staring down at you in the weak light filtering through the curtains from the back security light, filling your aching head. He eventually drops the pillow to the bottle-strewn floor, before walking away, trailing cologne, cigarettes, Bourbon, and raw meat.

**Empty**

You get up, close the window, walk past the yammering television with its surrounding piles of DVDs, empty bottles, and coffee can of cigarette butts, and shut the door of his apartment behind you before moving into a hotel on the other side of town with double locks on the doors while quitting coffee cold turkey because Bourbon lets you sleep nights.


End file.
